


Whatever it Takes

by jaysayheyyy



Series: Free Man [2]
Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: 5+1 Things, AI AU, Benrey doesn't understand humans, Benrey tries his best, Bubby is semi-helpful, HLVRAI but Gordon is also an AI, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:47:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26723140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaysayheyyy/pseuds/jaysayheyyy
Summary: Five times Benrey tries to help Gordon remember, and one time Gordon helps him instead.
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Series: Free Man [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943473
Comments: 5
Kudos: 169





	Whatever it Takes

**Author's Note:**

> It's not necessarily required to have read the first fic in the series, but it might help c:

i.

After everything restarts, Benrey opens his eyes to the same grey, flaking walls he’s seen at least a hundred times. He doesn’t even have to look to know where he is; back in Black Mesa, after the birthday party at the end of the world. Even so, he takes a moment to take stock of his surroundings. Dr. Coomer had started recommending it after a few, uh, incidents, with Benrey being a little confused on what was real and what wasn’t. Nothing big, of course, but it was. . . Unnerving. When you break the laws of your universe regularly, you start to forget where things start and end, that’s all. So Benrey presses his back lightly against the curved wall behind him, calculations of pressure turning to something like feeling. That was another unintended consequence of being Aware, as they called it; you saw code first, and translated it into reality.

“Howdy,” He hears, and turns just in time to see a familiar face approach the lab entrance. Gordon Freeman won’t remember him, but Benrey knows him well. He had, after all, gone through the same song and dance of the Game’s plot with Gordon at least two hundred times. Benrey isn’t counting anymore. A tired smile tugs at Benrey’s lips, his feet automatically moving to follow Gordon. 

“Hey,” Benrey says, calling for Gordon’s attention. When Gordon turns to look back at him, Benrey is almost at a loss for words. He’s still got those epic gamer looks, Benrey thinks. Prettiest eyes Benrey has ever seen and a little quirk in his brow as he waits for Benrey to continue, but those eyes hold no recognition towards Benrey. Swallowing his hurt, Benrey asks, “You got uh, a passport?”

“Wha-- you mean like a, like a company ID?” Gordon responds, looking incredibly confused. He is, after all, dressed in the HEV suit and fully prepared for the experiment coming up. For shits and giggles Benrey leans in close to the fake person by the door. 

“He doesn’t have his passport.” He stage-whispers, trying to keep himself from laughing. Gordon looks between them wildly. 

“Listen, dude, I’ve been working here for a couple years--” Way more than that, if you counted the resets, “and this passport shit is totally new. Besides, I’ve got an important test to get to, so can I just. Get it to you later?” Gordon impatiently backs up towards the doors. Benrey shakes his head. 

“L--Look, he’s so angry you don’t got your passport man, his fists. They’re balled. He wants to beat you up.” Benrey gestures to the emotionless guard, who gave no reaction. Gordon barks a startled laugh. 

“He’s clenching.” Gordon agrees almost absentmindedly, and then blinks, tugged back into his coding. Oh shit, Benrey thought, no way? Cringeman gonna remember some shit? Poggers.

Benrey crosses his arms dramatically and says, “I don’t-- I gotta protect you from him, so I’m gonna have to follow you around.”

“I’m literally in my uniform.” Gordon argues. Benrey ignores him and turns to the stone-faced guard, who no longer has any dialogue left to respond with. 

“I gotta-- I gotta calm him down. I need to soothe him.” Benrey says, and opens his mouth to spit out a stream of Sweet Voice. From the corner of his eye he watches Gordon, hoping for some sort of reaction like he’d seen just moments ago. 

“What was that?” Gordon asks, half laughing, mostly confused. A quick flash of disappointment hits Benrey. He doesn’t even recognize the Sweet Voice? 

“It’s how we calm each other down.” Benrey replies, though he’s not exactly referring to the guard. He doesn’t really remember when it’d become a thing, some time after the 60th reset maybe? But there’d been a night Gordon had sat awake, his hands shaking and his HEV suit caked in blood, and he’d asked Benrey to help. After seeing Benrey use the Sweet Voice so many times, he figured it’d help him calm down enough to get some rest, and Benrey. . . didn’t know how to process that Gordon was willingly asking him to sing to him. So he just cleared his throat, suddenly feeling shy (shy, of all things-- Gordon brought out the strangest parts of him, things he’d never even known about himself till then), and filled the air with light blue bubbles. 

From then on, it'd become somewhat of a ritual.

Gordon seems to hesitate for a second, his brows drawing inwards. His lips twitch, almost as if he wants to say something, before his face goes blank again. His expression quickly corrects itself into impatience at such a speed that Benrey can only attribute it to the Game’s interference. Inwardly, Benrey wilts. There was something there, he just knew it. If only he could figure out what was stopping it from rising to the surface.

“Okay, so I gotta go to the test chamber.” Gordon says, and turns around. 

“Yeah, alright, I just gotta follow you so he doesn’t beat you up.” Benrey jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the motionless man. Gordon breathes a sigh through his nose. 

“Whatever.” He grumbles, pressing onwards. 

“. . . I also want your passport please?”

“Gahhhhh!”

ii.

Yeah, so, this was totally not part of the plan, but whatever. So Tommy hit some stupid button, no biggie! Benrey would just. Hold up the door. The very heavy, metal, automatic door trying to crush him. Gordon slips through with ease, followed by Tommy and Dr. Coomer, with Bubby sliding under as Benrey ends up having to crouch. His arms are shaking, the metal digging into his palms and scratching his helmet, but it’s fine. He’s died before in too many ways to name. This was a new one, so hey, it just meant he could scratch it off the list! 

Benrey’s able to turn just enough to meet Gordon’s horrified eyes as he scrambles for an idea of what to do, surrounded by friends who don’t move. For them, Benrey dying was completely normal. He’d come back eventually-- they all did. The Game made sure of it. But Gordon doesn’t know that, and as Benrey falls to his knees, he is suddenly reminded that this is the first time Gordon would see him die this cycle. Benrey can’t help but crack a smile. Even if Gordon barely knows him, he still cares. Benrey’s model does something weird and suddenly he’s lying down, looking right up at the metal about to crush him. Thanks, Game, he thinks bitterly.

“Somebody move him, he’s not dead yet, he’s not dead yet!” Gordon barks, dropping down onto his hands and knees to reach a now prone Benrey. Bubby kneels beside Benrey with a pistol. His back is turned to Gordon, allowing only Benrey and Dr. Coomer beside him to see his grim expression. 

“Rest in pieces,” Bubby jokes half-heartedly, and shoots Benrey in the head.

Thanks, Benrey thought as his consciousness blinks into darkness like a TV shutting off, that was way quicker than getting crushed. What he does not see was this:

“It’s very sad, but it had to happen.” Dr. Coomer consoles Gordon.

“It had to happen, huh?” Gordon repeats, staring at Benrey’s body as if he had no clue how to process it. Down the hall the AI continue, but Gordon can’t bring his feet to move him away from Benrey. An inexplicable sadness floods his chest, his eyes tearing up.“I think it. . . didn’t.” And then the code washes away all the sadness and grief, replacing it with the relentless drive to continue with the Game. He turns away, leaving Benrey behind under the jaws of the metal gate.

iii. 

When he comes back, he does so in a way that he hates to be familiar with. The Game doesn’t handle his respawns with much grace anymore since he likes to break its rules so often. Unlike the others, Benrey has to resettle into the world. So he shows up as a skeleton. It’s supposed to be a cool metaphor for like, rebirth or some shit. Like he rebuilds himself-- don’t babies start as bones and grow all the muscles and skin and stuff afterwards? That’s how babies work, right? 

(It’s not, but forgive him, he’s both an idiot and an AI who hasn’t seen much of anything outside of the Game.)

He comes to in a vent, of all places, and wanders for a while. Eventually he starts to hear voices, ones that he recognizes as his friends, and heads towards them. It’s only when he sees Gordon at the other end of the oddly huge vent that he realizes he’s in skeletal form, and this version of Gordon hasn’t seen that yet. If he had the voice to swear he would’ve, but instead he settles for a few bubbles of Sweet Voice. Gordon should, logically, connect that to Benrey, right? 

Of course he doesn’t. He approaches Benrey until they’re a good eight feet apart, and when Benrey tries to meet him halfway, he shouts for Benrey to stay back. Maybe the Game doesn’t want Gordon to realize he’s looking at Benrey. Maybe that goes too far against his coding and he can’t comprehend it. Whatever reason it is, Gordon doesn’t recognize his pal Benrey, and points a gun at him. Ouch. Benrey tries more Sweet Voice. Nothing, of course. Gordon consults the others. Dr. Coomer considers punching Benrey with the detached tone of someone who has gone through far too many resets to hold life at much value. 

Not that Benrey blames him, ‘cause Benrey really doesn’t either, but this is supposed to be some sorta. . . bonding moment between him and Gordon. Past Gordons all found out about Benrey’s skeletal form, so like, can Benrey please have this? Thankfully Bubby tells Coomer no, do not, and Benrey tries a higher pitch of Sweet Voice. Then he hears something about Gordon attacking and backs up a few steps. No thank you! Niceness for Benrey yes please? Frustrated, Benrey emits a longer stream of Sweet Voice. 

“W--Wait!” Tommy says, stopping Gordon. “That’s green!”

“What does green mean?” Gordon asks. Benrey makes what he hopes is an encouraging noise, which is of course translated into Sweet Voice. 

“Green means he’s not mean!” Tommy says confidently, lowering his gun. Gordon, however, does not. Benrey tries to seem friendly, projecting calm blues and lovely purples, but looking into Gordon’s distrusting eyes twists an invisible knife into his gut. Forgetting that humans have delicate hearing, Benrey lets his pain and frustration out in a very high pitch of Sweet Voice. It’s painful even for him to listen to, but he can’t seem to stop it once it starts. It’s not fair that Gordon doesn’t remember him. It’s not fair that they have to do this over and over again. It’s not fair that Gordon’s considering shooting him--

And then Bubby tells him to shoot, and Gordon lets loose a stream of bullets.

After that whole ordeal, Benrey takes a while to think. He lets the others accompany Gordon while he sits in the vents, incredibly lucky that most of the bullets went through him-- literally, as he is nothing but thin bones at the moment. He can feel his human voice returning to him. That’s good, he recognizes faintly, a strange fog settling over his mind. He needs-- he’s not sure what he needs, numbness traveling down his arms and legs and wrapping around them like a blanket. Gordon doesn’t remember him. Benrey is trying his hardest to help him remember, and he knows the others are, in their own ways. But it all feels so wrong. Everything’s tilted, a step to the left, and Benrey can’t seem to keep up. Is this even real? 

Benrey presses a bony hand to the cold metal of the vent, ignoring the code he sees flash into life first, and takes a sudden, gasping breath. That-- that was close. It’s real, he reminds himself, tracing circles on the dusty metal. His back presses against the edge of the vent. The feeling is grounding. Just outside he can hear Gordon and the others talking. He can feel his breath in his currently nonexistent lungs. He’s here. 

And he is going to make Gordon remember, no matter what it takes.

iv.

He and Bubby talk about it when they can. He hears they met some dude named Forzen after Benrey kinda disappeared. He doesn’t remember much about it, honestly; if he had to guess, he’d say it was the disassociation. When Benrey comes back, they find one of the Wikipedia rooms. Benrey makes some shit up about All Dogs Go To Heaven 2, never even seen it, but the others play along. Bubby rides a rocket for the fun of it. They find the Wikipedia server room and instantly destroy it, ‘cause why not? It’s all just a game. For a while, things are okay. They’re not fun by any means, but they’re bearable. Gordon, though, remains an issue.

Benrey knows that Gordon can become Aware too. Bubby did it, Dr. Coomer did it, Tommy did it, and even if they have lapses in memory they come back. They stay Aware. But Gordon seems to hit a wall every time Benrey tries to show him the truth, and Benrey can’t, for the life of him, figure out what that wall is. So, he and Bubby devise a plan. It’s simple. Pain, in the Game, is nothing but a construct. It doesn’t have to be real if you don’t want it to be. After all, how many times has Dr. Coomer gotten shot and shrugged it off? 

Soon there will be an important event-- a cutscene. It’s unavoidable and required to continue. Gordon will get captured by the military and beat up a bit. But Bubby hypothesizes that if Gordon goes through some sort of trauma, maybe he’ll just. . . shut off his pain? And once he does that, he’ll realize there’s more he can do, and then he’ll see the code and bam! Aware, easy as pie. Benrey sees no issue with it. After all, if it doesn’t work, they’re just going to reset again. Gordon will come back good as new and they’ll try again. And again. And again, until Benrey loses his mind, probably.

They plan to get Gordon’s arm cut off. Benrey doesn’t love the idea. It sits weird in his gut when he thinks about it, but Bubby has a point: it’s trauma, it’s better than losing a leg, and it’s guaranteed to work far better than losing a finger or a toe. Benrey doesn’t love it, but what options does he have? Gordon has to remember. He has to, because there’s just so much Benrey can’t handle keeping to himself much longer like late nights spent in each other’s arms and feather-light touches on his hips, the tight grip of a hand in his own as they face the end of the world--

Whatever it takes, Benrey desperately reminds himself, and watches Gordon enter the trigger for the cutscene.

After it’s over, after Benrey sees how much pain Gordon went through and watches him struggle when he wakes, Benrey makes a decision. He digs deep into a power he hadn’t used much lately and scatters his friends across the map-- for their safety, of course. Gordon will hate them all. He knows they all had a hand in getting his arm cut off, and he’s not going to let it go that easily. So Benrey puts Tommy closest to Gordon because out of all of them, Tommy’s done the least wrong to Gordon. They’ll make up and Tommy will help him find Dr. Coomer, and then they’ll find Bubby and it’ll all be okay. The blame will go on Benrey, but that’s okay. He can take it. He just-- he just needs this cycle to end.

He doesn’t know what happens between Gordon and the others. When they find Benrey again, Gordon kills him. Every time he sees him, Gordon fucking kills him, over and over and over and Benrey keeps coming back. He doesn’t know why, to be honest. He ruined everything and now Gordon hates him, so why does he keep coming back? Why does he play it all off as some-- some stupid joke?

Maybe it’s because every time he looks at Gordon, his heart skips a beat. Or maybe it’s because every time Gordon speaks, he wants to listen. He loves it when Gordon says his name, even cursing him out, and hates seeing Gordon in pain. He can’t leave, no matter how much it hurts. So, Benrey stays. 

And makes a plan.

v.

It’s a last ditch effort. It’s desperate. It’s not pretty and Benrey knows it. The Game scratches at him, trying to fix him, to make him conform to the stupid plot, but Benrey refuses. He deletes the boss that had been waiting for Gordon, and inserts himself into its place. After everything, isn’t it fitting? Gordon already wants Benrey dead. Benrey’s already turned himself into the villain. Gordon won’t have to fight some freaky alien thing and deal with more trauma. It’ll be easy, Benrey reasons as his form glitches and stretches to strange proportions, it’ll be quick and easy. 

They take to the fight like fish to water. The AI, lovingly dubbed the Science Team by Dr. Coomer, help Gordon find each passport and destroy it. Benrey didn’t make it hard. He wants Gordon to find them, wants this to just end, digging his hands into his hair under the helmet and tugging at the strands as if it’ll help kill him. 

“Why are you doing this, Benrey?” Gordon yells over the sound of skeletons screaming Sweet Voice, his gun trained on the malformed, grotesque mockery of Benrey. Benrey can barely get his words out, fumbling for an explanation. Every wrong thought has the Game snapping at him, mixing all his words up as he speaks.

“I’m a good, I’m-- I’m a great cool, but you make me angry!” Benrey says. It’s true. Why couldn’t Gordon just remember? Why is Benrey even trying? “I was gonna be nice to you-- don’t you remember? I got games, bro, Heavenly Sword, we used to play it all the tiiiime!”

“What the fuck are you even saying?” Gordon shouts, red in the face with anger and bewilderment. Benrey knows he’s not making sense. He doesn’t make sense very often. 

“Do you know how sucks this is for me?” Benrey asks, and growls when he hears his own stupid voice mess up the words he knew he had. “Can’t speak right, stupid Game-- ow, fuck.” Benrey swears as the Game sends him a splitting headache. It’s a warning. Gordon looks like he’s about to break down. Benrey puts his hands on the gross, wet floor, leaning his head in as close as he can to Gordon. Frozen, the man doesn’t shoot. 

“I wanted to be good,” Benrey says, “but you made me bad.”

Gordon’s lips twitch like he wants to say something. His brows furrow, his hand clenches, and for a moment Benrey thinks he’s done it. But just like that it all seems to wipe itself away, and Gordon’s expression flickers back into grim determination.

The fight goes on, and Gordon does not remember.

+i.

It’s been seven days, 8 hours, twenty minutes, and forty-nine seconds since Gordon took the game and turned it upside down. Since he made a new world and got rid of the plot. Benrey can’t seem to stop counting every moment. He feels like it’s all going to fall apart any second now, and if it does, he wants to remember his freedom when he had it, at least. He’s curled up on the couch with the thickest hoodie he’s ever worn, which-- well, he doesn’t much to compare to, of course, but it’s thick. And fluffy. And warm. It feels wrong. The hood over his head is far more comfortable than the helmet, but it’s not the helmet and that’s why it’s wrong. No bullet-proof vest, no belt buckles. . . It’s jarring. 

He realizes he’s been staring at a dark TV screen and reaches out towards the coffee table to grab the remote, but his hands are shaking so bad he can’t will his fingers to wrap around it. His breathing comes out fast and shaky, his gut turning with dread. Is this real? Is any of this real? He can’t feel the cushions beneath him, can’t feel the lining of the hoodie on his arms, he’s numb--

And then there’s a hand on his shoulder, firm and heavy, and Benrey comes back with a gasping sob. He’s on the floor, just a few feet from the coffee table, a rug under his bare feet. In front of him is Gordon, who also belongs to the hand on Benrey’s shoulder. Distantly he can hear Gordon coaxing him through breathing exercises and tries to match his own with Gordon’s, reaching up to put both his hands atop Gordon’s. He relishes in the warmth, no code flashing behind his eyes. No Game. When he’s present enough, Benrey leans in close and hugs Gordon. 

“Is it real?” Benrey asks, his voice barely audible with his face buried in Gordon’s shoulder. Gordon squeezes him a little tighter.

“It’s real, Benrey. It’s not going anywhere.”


End file.
